Bored with the whole Praetoria schtick

'A smart guy once said it's our choices that determine who we are.'

Praetoria is the world where the capes made a lot of really bad choices.

Blood Widow Ricki * Tide Shifter * T-34 * Opposite Reaction * Shaolin Midnight * ChernobylCheerleader

Entropy Legion * Hyperion Force * Hero Heights

Apparently all of them. Hence the Evil Goatee Earth thing.

Well, yes, Praetoria is 'what if the good guys, starting with Statesman, all took the wrong path?' and it cascaded from there.

Or more to the point, if Praetoria is Evil Goatee Earth, then what is Primal Earth where the capes all took the right path? Care Bear Earth?

Blood Widow Ricki * Tide Shifter * T-34 * Opposite Reaction * Shaolin Midnight * ChernobylCheerleader

Entropy Legion * Hyperion Force * Hero Heights

Blood Widow Ricki * Tide Shifter * T-34 * Opposite Reaction * Shaolin Midnight * ChernobylCheerleader

Entropy Legion * Hyperion Force * Hero Heights

An interesting use of the words "we" and "most"

It does make them look like shallow set pieces, doesn't it? It also begs the question, how can their primal earth counterparts expect us to trust them, when apparently all it takes is for Statesman to turn evil, and considering we have yet to meet another good Statesman we really should be keeping a very very close eye on our Statesman.

Because we shouldn't judge someone on what someone else is doing? Just because someone has someone who looks like them, or even shares their DNA whole cloth doesn't meant they're the same people. Or do you think that what someone's identical twin does is a predictive measure on what that person will do, even if they share nothing more than DNA?

It isn't. I think you'll find that of those having an opinion on the Freedom Phalanx characters, the vast majority will fall somewhere in the stated spectrum. I don't think I've spoken to one person with a positive view of them. (That's person, not character...I've got a character who thinks Statesman is the greatest thing since sliced bread. Of course, she's a teen hero still in high school and she's never met him.)

And of course it's impossible to have a mixed or nuanced view of it. Because you know, we're just not that complicated or smart.

Can you not talk for everyone when you don't know everyone?

The characters aren't that complicated or smart. This isn't Wuthering Heights.

I don't have a problem with any of them

I wasn't talking about the characters. I was talking about people. You just made a blanket statement about people, and I hate hate hate that. At best, it's a lazy oversight, and the kind of statement people throw away without really understanding what it means.

At worst it's disingenuous, or even a flat out lie meant to support your statement with evidence that either doesn't exist, is near impossible to prove, or that someone hasn't bothered to research. You can say what you think. That's valid. You can say what you believe most people have told you, which is heresay, but whatever, at least it's anecdotal. You cannot, CANNOT say "everyone thinks this" and have that be a valid statement without research to back it up with percentages of answers, a response rate and a margin of error, none of which I expect anyone to do for such a pointless question and one which I'm 99.9% (meaningless stats are meaningless) sure that you never got. EDIT: And it automatically, without evidence, puts anyone who disagrees with you into a possibly fictional minority of your design meant to belittle or discredit the other side. /edit

So do not deign to speak for me, for my brother, for my friend, or for that guy I've never met who stands around in pocket D with a bunny costume asking people to pull his tail. You do not speak for me, even if I agree with you. Setting yourself as an authority for what "most people" think is putting yourself on a pedestal that you do not own, and you haven't the authority to claim.

Unless you're willing to give me the evidence with a standard deviation.

I'm sorry if this comes across as harsh. Even if I happen to agree with you I dislike, with a passion, people making blanket statements that they're not prepared to go the extra mile to back up. And for the record?

isn't good enough evidence for anything. It only proves what those who you spoke to believe.

It does not matter if everyone agrees with this or not. These signature heroes should have been people we could admire and respect, someone for new heroes to look up to and for veteran heroes to be proud to call peers. As long as even a significant minority think otherwise they have failed at being that, and are best relegated to window dressing.

Yeah, leave me out of this!

ps. I never liked any of the Freedom Phalanx.

I like them

The only thing significant about these people is that they're such a tiny minority - which makes them insignificant

No... that's what WE live in.

I agree to a point. I don't think they fleshed them out enough. But I'm not going to talk for everyone. If I make an arguement - and to your credit when you've usually made arguements (whether I've agreed with you or disagreed with you) - I tell you the reasons why I believe what I believe and why you should agree with me, if any. I leave it up to you to figure out if my argument had merit or not. I do not presume what anyone else thinks unless they've told me. I'll even say what I think they should think, but I will not ever say "I know everyone thinks this way".

My problem wasn't with Venture's side of the argument - I happen to (with qualifications) agree with him. It's that the way he argued his side was an unsubstantiated claim designed to pointlessly belittle the other side. It's a cheap argument. It's lazy, and it's malicious at it's very very worst. If you think your side of the argument is obvious then say it's obvious to you, and lay out the position. If it's not obvious then I'll ask why it's obvious, but don't say "My position is obvious, and most of the players agree with me, because everyone I've run into thinks the same". I don't know who he asked - was it friends (which tends to be a self selected homogenous group)? Was it randoms? How many? What percentage of the player base? Across multiple servers? On the forums (which is a self selected group of people with generally strong opinions)? Without that information, a statement that "most people believe that..." might or might not be lying, but I have no way of finding out.

Venture always seems to make those styles of arguments. I think he believes himself as some kind of self-imposed representative of the entire playerbase.

Um, yeah... well I'll state here and now, he doesn't speak for me or anyone else who isn't him. Venture's just one player. Screw his ego.

To be frank, that's some pretty high standards there.

Blood Widow Ricki * Tide Shifter * T-34 * Opposite Reaction * Shaolin Midnight * ChernobylCheerleader

Entropy Legion * Hyperion Force * Hero Heights

But there isn't any lesson. I don't explore the depths of Battle Maiden's psyche and history to see how she turned evil and learn some lesson about intentions and morality. I just punch her in the face and continue to punch her in the face until she stops moving. And dodge blue patches of death while I do it.

Actually Praetoria does not force people to be evil. On the Warden side, there is Tunnel Rat, Jessica Flores, Luke Larson, Dr. Arvin, Seer 1381, Aaron Walker, and Penelope Yin. On the Responsibility side there is Cleopatra, Washington, Warrant, Kang, Alec Parson, and IVy.

Even some of the Praetors are not evil. Antimatter just has bad taste in women and Bobcat has bad taste in guys and seems to be a ditz. Dominatrix, Diabolique, Mother Mayhem, Malaise, and Infernal are rotten to the core. Siege and Nightstar are programmed so it is debatable if they are evil or not. Not sure where to put Cole and Neuron. Praetoria is not the mirror universe version of Primal Earth, but an Earth where things went very, very wrong and certain people had to make difficult decisions that ruined their innocence.

Praetor White seems like a pretty decent fellow as well, despite his short fuse and the fact that he punches like a truck. Sure, he supplies the Destroyers with Fixadine, but they used to be his old gang and he wasn't the one who got them hooked on it in the first place.

We can blame Dominatrix for that.